Dataset Collection

Abstract

The Met Office have operated a network of wind profiling lidars at various sites around the British Isles since the first was installed in 1998, following the installation of the NERC MST radar near Aberystwyth.

This datasets collection contains the available 30 minute averaged wind profile data from these sites made available for research by the academic community and included parameters such as measurements of the zonal, meridional and vertical components of winds, signal to noise ratio and spectral width.

The data are from boundary layer UHF wind profilers located at Camborne (915 Mhz), Dunkeswell (1290 Mhz) and Wattisham (1290 Mhz) and a Stratosphere-Troposphere (ST) VHF radar at South Uist operating at 64 Mhz. A fourth UHF radar operated at 915 Mhz was operated at the NERC MST Radar site at Capel Dewi, near Aberystwyth, between November 1999 and March 2002; it was then relocated to South Uist until May 2005 ahead of and during the commisioning of the 64 Mhz radar, before being relocated to its present location on the Isle of Man. An additional Degreane wind profiler has since been purchased by the Met Office and is deployed at the Chilbolton Observatory, but data from this instrument are not presently part of this dataset. This dataset contains wind profiler data from Camborne (from 1998), Dunkeswell (from 1999), Wattisham (2001 to present), Aberystwyth (Capel Dewi, 1999 to 2002), South Uist (915MHz, 2003 to 2004), South Uist (64MHz, from 2004), and Isle of Man (2005 to 2008 and since 2010). Data from these wind-profilers, and from the NERC MST Radar, are used operationally by the Met Office for numerical weather prediction. They additionally receive data from up to another 15 wind-profiling systems throughout Europe as part of the CWINDE (COST Wind Initiative for a Network Demonstration in Europe) project. A map showing the locations of the wind profilers is available on the CWINDE website. Data from wind profilers is also routinely transmitted accross the Global Telecommunication System (GTS) according to standards defined by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). Those data can be found in the Met Office MetDB dataset also held by the BADC.